EVENTS

Republicans hate children, too

At the National Institutes of Health, nearly three-quarters of the staff was furloughed. One result: director Francis Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said.

Well the reptilians want to get back to traditional values, where praying to gawd is your only way to a cure. Who needs hospitals when the lawd is on yaar side? Next, a privately funded prayertorium in every county.

I am so fucking done with these people. They talk about how “pro-life” they are, while destroying lives across the country. People need health care NOW, there shouldn’t be any debate about the NEED (maybe about how it works, but you don’t destroy the only system available because you don’t like parts of it). It’s sick.

Let me break down what is happening in my own family right now. One family, among the millions in this country who are being affected by this:

1) My father, a federal police officer, got notice from his work that he is still expected to show up and work, but he won’t be receiving any pay. (Isn’t forcing people to work without pay slavery? Didn’t we outlaw that a while ago?) So he won’t get paid, but he also won’t have time to look for another job, apply for unemployment, anything. And there’s no guarantee that he will receive any back pay for his work…he might, or they might just take away his vacation/comp time (like they did during the sequester) or some other fucked up thing.

I had to watch my father yesterday, sit at the table, looking more broken than I have ever seen him, almost crying, apologizing to my Mom for not being able to “take care of the family”, like this is his fault. (Yay, sexism. Another entry in “the patriarchy hurts men, too” files: my dad feeling like it is his sole responsibility to care for the family, and he is a failure as a man if he can’t “provide”.)

2) My house is already filled to the brim because my brother lost his job, and I’m living at home because I’m disabled and I can’t live alone right now. I depend on my parents for survival. And our tiny house just got even fuller, because my foster sister lost her housing (thanks to the sequester) and so she moved back in, pregnant, with her three kids all under the age of six. They are sleeping in the living room, smushed on the couches and a pad on the floor, because that is the only space for them. Otherwise, they would be under a bridge or something. And my sister sat at the table and cried yesterday. She is losing WIC. She is losing Head Start, so her child care is going away, so she won’t be able to look for a job. Her food stamps have been slashed, and her cash aid is iffy–she see’s her social worker next week to find out the situation. She doesn’t know what she can do, how she will feed her kids. She is pregnant, but she has been starving herself, not taking the vitamins she needs, because she feels it’s more important to feed her kids than herself, and she can’t afford prenatal vitamins. The state will give her a couple appointments with some trainee midwife or OB/GYN (though her last pregnancy she never saw a doctor) before she has her child. When her last baby was born, she waited at home, taking care of her other kids, for five hours after her water broke and her contractions started, because she didn’t have anyone to watch her children. She almost had to give birth in the back of the ambulance, but made it to the hospital and 30 minutes later my nephew was born. If her sister had been late coming home, Tae’veon would have been born on her kitchen floor.

3) It almost seems incidental, compared to the other stuff that’s going on with my family, but my food stamps have been slashed, too. They already weren’t enough to pay for my monthly food needs, and now they’re cut even further.

My family will do what we always do: work together to take care of each other. We will pool our money, our food, do the best we can do. But we honestly don’t know how we are going to make it through this, if the shutdown lasts very long. And there are so many other families out there like ours–probably more worse off. At least Dad has no minor children to care for. At least there are several adults in the household bringing in something. What are families with one source of income going to do when that job is gone? What are mothers going to do without WIC, without Food Stamps?

There are Republican congressmen tweeting that this is a “vacation” for federal workers. Saying on camera that no one is going to be harmed by the shutdown. They’ll just use their savings! (Note: people who work for the government aren’t doing it for the pay. The pay is shit, far worse that what you’d get in the general market for your skills. Most federal employees do it because they want to serve their country. But it means living paycheck-to-paycheck, for many of them. Savings? Hah.) People on Fox News are dismissing the stories of real people suffering as “sob stories”, political theater. It’s not theater. It’s reality. And it’s sickening.

(And what’s really astonishing–horrifying? disgusting? tragic?–is that my hardcore Republican father is going through this, and he still blames Obama for the whole thing. All his fault. If only we put more Republicans in charge, if only Romney had won, everything would be better. SMH.)

All this reminds me that the Rethuglicans are anxious to be babies born, but are utterly uninterested in taking care of them once they are born. Must be a character flaw. Character says take care of those who are already here….

And yet, if the rethuglicans have their way, we’ll have mini-budgets to reopen NASA and national parks along with federal courts and homeland security and the DOD. That should cheer those little urchins dying of dreaded diseases, giving them something to dream about while they waste away waiting for treatment. Why, the ‘pugs could use their smiling faces in the next series of campaign commercials bashing the ACA. Well, assuming they don’t wait too long…

Nerd of Redhead @11, once the baby is born, it’s all about the bootstraps! REAL American babies don’t need government handouts, no sirree. Sure, it hurts the poor and underprivileged, but, eh, screw them. They’ve been sucking off the government teat since Johnson, time to cut them off.

Worse than that, they don’t even care about those supposedly precious wee “unborn babies”. Everything they do: cutting food stamps, destroying WIC, preventing access to pre-natal care, blocking a bill that would keep employers from forcing pregnant women to do work against their doctor’s orders and personal safety (or the safety of their unborn baby), deregulating businesses so they can pollute the environment, cutting housing so poor people can only live in unsafe areas (near those polluting factories)–not to mention a foreign policy that kills pregnant women (and those unborn babies they love so much!)–pretty much their entire platform contributes to this country’s shamefully high infant mortality rate.

They don’t give a fuck about “unborn babies”. They want to control women. Period. I used to think, oh, “pro-life people just don’t understand but they do care passionately about women and babies.” And maybe there are a few foot soldiers who feel that way. But the majority? The people in charge? Yeah right. You can’t do everything in your power to hurt pregnant women and children, and then turn around and say you care about unborn babies.

Ugh, I am so fucking angry right now. And I feel totally impotent. Yeah, I called my congressperson, yeah, I called Boehner, yeah, I sent emails, but really, what is that going to accomplish? I feel totally helpless, as I’m watching people I love start to crumble.

Wait! The GOP really loves kids! That’s why they cut SNAP (food stamps), WIC, school lunch subsidies, children’s health programs and services, Head Start, and education. The GOP cares for these kids so much, they want these kids to learn to fend for themselves so they don’t grow up to be one of the takers mooching off the wealthy.

But remember, violence is not the answer. Only participating in Free Elections(tm) and Peaceful Demonstrations(c) will you ever change anything. Someday, if you work reeeeeally hard, the people stomping on your children might have different last names than the ones who are stomping on you.

So where are the christians now to defend what they helped wrought? They jump on most other threads soon enough to defend their despicable ways. Is even this level of hypocrisy finally too much for even them?

So far, the R’s hate: Poor people, middle class people, old people, young people, women people, Moooslim people, brown people, black people, Mexican people, Jewish people (don’t let their love for Israel fool you) and the list goes on and on. And don’t forget working people, the ones who spend 40+ hours a week but aren’t in the 1%.

I saw an interesting breakdown this morning of votes in Congress on the Republicans “Kill Obamacare or we shut down the government” bill. Republicans voting against it (alongside the Democrats) included Michele Bachmann, Steve King, and Louie Gohmert — apparently because it wasn’t batshit insane enough.

Dalilama @19
They don’t hesitate to let their pets attack us. They only pay attention to left-wing groups–you guys pointed out yourselves that the right-wing militia movement is basically an unpaid paramilitary wing of the GOP. Why not make one of our own? The government is a joke, the police are just another gang, the laws only matter if somebody with money is looking for a reason to put someone without it in prison, and nobody is protecting anyone from anyone anymore.

As I recall, some bright young black men noticed this back in the sixties. Remember what they did?

Grayson argued that while “reasonable people can disagree” about the merits of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, Republicans are using it “as an excuse to attack the ACA as a whole.”

“When you talk to them privately,” Grayson told Salon, “what you find is that if they could repeal Medicare they would. If they could repeal Medicaid they would,” along with the requirement that emergency rooms treat patients who can’t pay for care.

“They are literally offended by the idea that people would get the care they need to stay healthy or alive even though they can’t afford it,” charged Grayson. “They regard it as some kind of crime against nature.”

I’m so so sorry you and your family are having a hard time! ! ! ! I feel angry and impotent too ! ! I can’t even find the words ! ! !

To everybody else discussing violent / non-violent action, Remember that people died for the unions, died for organizing. Remember that MLK and Ghandi and Mandela had peaceful movements but that there was a lot of violence in the wake and that it is that violence –some say– that got things moving.

Well, that just sucks. What gets lost in all this is that government workers (aka bureaucrats) are people too, with families and bills to pay. The dehumanizing of government workers is just another shitty aspect of the US political scene.

As I recall, some bright young black men noticed this back in the sixties. Remember what they did?

If you’re referring to the Black Panther Party, they eventually went into politics, and at no time did they actually attempt an armed insurrection, which I took you to be advocating in your orignal post. Preparing for the probability that violence will be directed at your group is not the same thing as preparing to attempte to acheive your group’s goals through the application of violence.

Bicarbonate # 27

Remember that people died for the unions, died for organizing.

Yes, but those deaths happened when they were attacked by strikebreakers, not when they launched armed assaults of their own.

Remember that MLK and Ghandi and Mandela had peaceful movements but that there was a lot of violence in the wake and that it is that violence –some say– that got things moving.

Once again, the violence you’re talking about was directed at the movements, not caused by them.

I really really hope this debacle will be remembered during the 2014 Congressional elections. To bad Cruz is a senator!

I hope Erin’s father keeps his time cards and gets a way to be paid for time lost. In our skeptic meetup one US Govt. employee still has to the same work whether there is a sequester or not. The pile on his desk just gets higher.

Dalilama: “If you’re referring to the Black Panther Party, they eventually went into politics, and at no time did they actually attempt an armed insurrection, which I took you to be advocating in your orignal post.”

In our city they created free food and medical programs. This is what I remembered when I entered the U. of Washington in the mid-1970s. This obviously has more of an impact on me than previous rhetoric, and it is a positive impact.

I’m reminded of that episode of Deep Space Nine where Sisko and Gul Dukat end up trapped in a cave together and Dokat gives Sisko both barrels of his worldview and how he believes all his actions are justified, and after Sisko is rescued, he remarks that he’s always tried to give people the benefit of the doubt and see where they’re coming from, so it shocks him to the core that he can only think of Dukat as a truly evil man. That’s pretty much how I view the Republican Party.

In our city they created free food and medical programs. This is what I remembered when I entered the U. of Washington in the mid-1970s. This obviously has more of an impact on me than previous rhetoric, and it is a positive impact.

Oh yes, they also did quite a lot of community organizing and all kinds of community programs, which I should not have left out, but I don’t think that’s what Jonathan was referring to. Rather, I suspect he was referring to the times that they carried guns to defend themselves from the police, a practice which has turned out to be of limited utility no matter who practices it.

Lofty @6 – ironic, isn’t it. They’d be shown up by the monastery hospitals of the Middle Ages. Limited (or outright wrong) though the medical knowledge was, and however big a component of it prayer was, they were actually trying to help people … and that included the poor. The Republicans? Unless you’re rich, white, straight and preferably a bloke, just go away and die.

I posted this elsewhere down blog, it is more appropriate here.
When I get compleatly frustrated by the assinine behavior of elected officials, humor is what’s left.

How the Kochs and their GOPs stole Congress

People in hometown like health care a lot,
But the Kochs and their GOPs up in DC, did not!

They hated Obamacare for more than one reason,
“Free Enterprise only,” they said, “or it‘s treason!”
What Free Enterprise means to a Koch or a GOP:
I’ve got mine, I’ll get yours and you can’t make me stop!

The Kochs and their GOPs, they knew nothing of poor.
You get what you pay for and not a thing more!
Not thing one, not thing two, you don’t get a break,
As far as we see, all you do is take!
The only investments they saw were their own.
But they missed the whole point, that the country had grown!
Up! From homeless in slums, on roadsides or park benches!
Up! From grief, child labor, or dads working in trenches!
Up! From poverty, sexism, bigotry, hate,
It’s no longer that type of a country, it ain’t!

But GOPs don’t want women to have their own life,
Proper role for a female is a GOP trophy wife.
Affordable health care would loosen the reins,
‘Why, they’d be free in the world, to use their own brains!’
And those GOPs had a deep darker secret, its true!
The say of our President, “he’s not the right hue!”
Yacht clubbers, law scholars, stock brokers by sight,
and presidents surely should be lily white!

Now the Kochs and their GOPs, were in it quite tight,
they needed some help since election night.
Back in ’oh 8 and ’12 it was people who spoke,
No one wanted to live in a country that’s broke!
No one wanted their daughters or wives with a yoke!
All one wants is a chance both to work and to grow,
To choose whom they marry, have families and so,
Affordable health care was then passed as a law,
So if sick and/ or injured, you’ll not lose it all.

But the Kochs and their GOPs, had a plan in the night,
they were in it for profit, and they thought that’s their right!
To succeed, they’d need puppets, they’d need puppets who would,
fool just enough folks with a wink of their hood.
For this plan to work as they hoped that it might,
the found people whose heads weren’t screwed on quite so right.
They named ‘em Tea Baggers (Tea Party they’re called),
and they send ‘em (with strings) up to Washington Mall.

The Koochs and their GOPs now with Tea Party puppets,
they got on the stump and they blew loud their trumpets.
To drown out the facts and to generate hate,
they’d start each day early and end each day late.
The plan from the start was by hook and by crook,
to protest every policy, plan or outlook.
To stifle all growth, to grandstand, and what’s more;
to lay blame for their acts at the president’s door.

Now congress must work, up on Capitol Hill,
to formulate laws and to pay every bill.
This takes agreement and often debate,
tempers can flare and folks get irate.

So the Kochs and their GOPs, they saw their big chance,
they pulled strings on their puppets who then took a stance.
Tea Partiers screamed “shut the government down!”
We’ll have our own way or we’ll wreck every town!
We don’t want poor people with medical needs,
to have access to healthcare- it’s against all our creeds.
You get what you pay for, and not one thing more,
‘cause profitability is our only score.

But Obamacare came, despite puppets and strings,
despite ‘state’s rights’ law suits and Tea Party dings.
The Kochs and their GOPs are now in a real fight,
perhaps they will realize that healthcare just might,
for people in need mean a little bit more,
life, joy and liberty, these things are not scores.

Wow, thank you. Sometimes I am overwhelmed at how awesome the community here at FTB is. This is one of those times.

But you know what, I think we’re going to be OK. We’re working together, and we’ll get through this. We always have before. ;) (And if the shutdown only lasts less then a week–and I keep hearing political analysts say that’s what’s going to happen…but they also said they didn’t think the GOP would actually force a shutdown, so…)

There are a lot of families way worse off than mine. Luckily, Mom and Dad no longer have any minor children they’re directly responsible for, aside from my niece and nephews our household is mostly made up of adults, and several of us are bringing in at least something, be it the limited disability, food stamps, income from temp jobs, etc. Also, at least we don’t have to worry about losing our home…my mom may not be getting paid for her full time job (uh, she’s a pastor of a small church that doesn’t have enough money to pay a salary) but the family gets to live in the church parsonage, at least. (And yes, I do get the irony, there.)

So thank you so much but really, we’re going to be OK. There are so many people who would need it more.

I had a great laugh recently when my conservative older brother who worked for the government all his life and is now retired wrote me “Surely the Republicans aren’t stupid enough to shut down the government!” Of course he was worried that his pension would be cut (apparently it won’t be), but his blindness to reality astonished me. He also thinks the ACA won’t be implemented because of all the problems and misunderstandings (mostly caused by state governments rejecting it, I think) associated with setting it up. We rarely talk religion and politics but I just couldn’t resist telling him to get his head out of his ass.

So, there’s a suggestion that some members of Congress are literally drunk while doing this. How many of them support workplace drug tests, I wonder? You’d be shocked if someone operating heavy machinery was reeking of alcohol: shouldn’t people demand that those operating the machinery of government adhere to the same standards of sobriety they expect from others?

I’m surprised that noone else is at least a little worried about the fact that children are taking part(well they can’t, their parents would have to sign them up) in clinical trials? What kind of trials are these? Dose-finding? Drug vs placebo?

I know it happens, but ethically this is a very grey area, in particular with regards to studies on cancer patients. Not exactly the same as enrolling your kid in a trial of a new cough syrup.

I’m surprised that noone else is at least a little worried about the fact that children are taking part in clinical trials?

Are you kidding? I have a friend who tried to get his dying son into leukemia clinical trials but the boy died before he could be enrolled. And I have another adult friend who was able to take part in the trials and is now in remission. Should have been dead months ago.

I know two kids who died of leukemia this year and we are on the verge of breakthrough.

that’s what I was trying to point out. People will try anything when it comes to their children dying from cancer. It’s not a good time for rational decisions. And your two anecdotes notwithstanding, I wonder what the numbers really are. Do not forget, people go to the Bruczynski clinic with their kids too.

I read this and wonder when are the thinking, rational people going to start votng these pathetic asshats out of office. I moved to Europe 15 years ago when I retired and it was the best move I ever made. The politicians here mostly only steal what they can, they are not worried with things like who is sleeping with who,or abortion, gay rights and such, I am in their health care system, which while not perfect at least I know I won’t go bankrupt if something bad goes wrong, and yes abortion is also covered if needed. I still vote in the states absentee and I do not ever vote for any reputhug. If these bible thumping asses are not gotten rid of the U.S will end up someplace below third world status.

Face it. Republicans hate Obama. Everything else is just fallout. They will do *anything* to make him look like a failure.

They know the Affordable Care Act will be wildly popular once it gets into full swing. Heck, it’s already pretty popular outside the Fox News Rush Limbaugh Kool Aid crowd. They know that if it succeeds and thrives, it will be a major success for Obama and the republicans’ campaign to discredit him will have failed.

They hate Obama so intensely, they’re willing to burn this country to the ground to get him.

rogerfirth@47, I respectfully disagree. Oh, not that they don’t Obama, they certainly do. But this would be happening with any Democrat president. This whole thing started when the Republican party went off the rails under Nixon, and was cemented by Reagan’s gawdawful presidency. Now the chickens have come home to roost.

Studies show that roughly 22% of the American population are hopelessly stupid or corrupt–that’s the % that self-identify as Tea Partiers. We can only hope that the remaining 78% will see through the Republicans lies and reject these assholes.

The purpose of those clinical trials is to test the effectiveness of New Treatment X on Disease Y. Which means you need patients. And there are some diseases that only manifest in children. Yes, it is ethically complicated, but that’s why the NIH has staff ethicists to figure that out. And in any case, the alternative – not doing trials at all – is worse, because the children would go untreated.

@rorschach #41 – I am a “civilian” in the field of medical research: I’m on the community advisory board for an HIV vaccine trials unit. I’ve also been on panels that addressed the ethical issues of human medical experimentation.

As Esteleth #51 points out, there are some diseases that affect primarily children. There are many more diseases that being in childhood which can cause severe negative consequences in adulthood if left untreated. And there are diseases that can affect children and adults alike, which we really do not know how to treat in children because the vast majority of research on treatment options is done on adults. HIV anti-retrovirals are a good example: about 10% of all people with HIV — just over 3.4 million people, as of the end of 2011 — are children the age of 15. Once they start drug treatment, they will be on it for the rest of their lives. How will these drugs affect the development of their immune systems, or bone growth, or organ function, or sexual maturation? We have a good understanding of dosages for a 160 pound adult, but what dosage is safe for a 40 pound child, and what are the symptoms of drug overdose? We really do not know. Without research involving children, we will never know.

There are a lot of ethical guidelines in place. In the Nuremberg trials after WW II, several judges adopted the Nuremberg Code as guidelines to determine whether or not a particular piece of Nazi research was to be counted as a crime against humanity. In 1964, a group of researchers came together in Finland and issued the Declaration of Helsinki, which adapted the Nuremberg Code to set ethical guidelines for human research. Most nations eventually adopted this code into their national laws.

The United States did this in 1981, where it is called the Common Rule. The Declaration and the Common Rule require that all human experiments be reviewed by an Ethical Review Board (ERB), sometimes called an Institutional Review Board (IRB), to make sure that the testing protocols, selection of study participants and all other aspects of the research meet ethical and legal guidelines. In 1983, both the Declaration and the Common Rule were amended to require informed consent from minors whenever possible. In 1993, the World Health Organization issued its own guidelines, the International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects, which serves as a model along side the Declaration.

Community advisory boards began to appear in the late 1980s in the context of HIV research. The United States was still reeling from the scandal of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments and the callous targeting by the US government of an underprivileged population for medical experimentation. AIDS activists demanded that their communities be solicited for input on research that targeted community members, so that the ethics and appropriateness of the research could be evaluated before consent was given. While ERBs and IRBs are basically legal ass-covering by the researchers and sponsors, CABs serve as community and participant advocates. Most HIV research networks now require CABs, and more and more communities are establishing their own similar bodies.

As far as possible, the ethical issues are being recognized and addressed. If this is a genuine concern for you, there are plenty of opportunities for you to get involved.

Even in conditions that manifest in both children and adults, and there’s no documented pattern of a treatment affecting maturation (bone growth, puberty, etc), an arm for children would be necessary for the sake of establishing dosage. There’s a canard that is 100% true: Children are Not Small Adults. You cannot simply scale the adult dosage to a child’s weight. Between different metabolic rates and hormone levels, and different ratios in how big Organ X is vs how big Organ Y is, children’s bodies are quite different from adults’.

Worse than that, they don’t even care about those supposedly precious wee “unborn babies”. Everything they do: cutting food stamps, destroying WIC, preventing access to pre-natal care, blocking a bill that would keep employers from forcing pregnant women to do work against their doctor’s orders and personal safety (or the safety of their unborn baby), deregulating businesses so they can pollute the environment, cutting housing so poor people can only live in unsafe areas (near those polluting factories)–not to mention a foreign policy that kills pregnant women (and those unborn babies they love so much!)–pretty much their entire platform contributes to this country’s shamefully high infant mortality rate.

They don’t give a fuck about “unborn babies”. They want to control women. Period. I used to think, oh, “pro-life people just don’t understand but they do care passionately about women and babies.” And maybe there are a few foot soldiers who feel that way. But the majority? The people in charge? Yeah right. You can’t do everything in your power to hurt pregnant women and children, and then turn around and say you care about unborn babies.

Let me just clog the innertubes with this.

I used to say the Reptilians stop caring about you as soon as you’re born. I was wrong. They never care about you in the first place.

As I recall, some bright young black men noticed this back in the sixties. Remember what they did?

Trayvon Martin is still dead.

Remember that people died for the unions, died for organizing. Remember that MLK and Ghandi and Mandela had peaceful movements but that there was a lot of violence in the wake and that it is that violence –some say– that got things moving.

Remember how communism ended, and how certain postcommunist dictatorships ended.

I know people who were involved in the Serbian Revolution. Body count? Zero.

Also, Gandhi. The h is not cosmetic. Every IPA transcription on this page is a link to a sound file; click a few.

This thing that the Republican congress is doing. In what way is it not an act of terrorism?

Please, this doesn’t mean Republicans hate children. It just means they are totally willing to hold them as hostages. You think all hostage-takers hate their hostages? Nah. Most of them are just callously indifferent.

Yeah, I’m wondering if I’ve been giving the Republicans too much credit by saying they want to move the country back to the 1950’s…I think they’re demonstrating that their real target is the 1850’s. No environmental regulations on business, none of those pesky laws that protect workers and prevent child labor. If your employee loses a hand or an eye or something at work, you wouldn’t be at all responsible for his or her medical expenses–hell, you could then just fire them for not showing up to work the next day! Not only would there be no “Obamacare,” there’s no such thing as health insurance! And with all the work they’re doing to a) gerrymander districts so that they are almost entirely white, older, with lower education levels and b) pass restrictive voting laws that predominately affect people of color, students, and those who live in urban areas (and hey, now that annoying Voting Rights Act isn’t standing in the way anymore!), it’s quite clear they’re longing for a time when only white males could vote.